The Ware for November 2025 is shown below.
This one is hopefully a bit easier to guess compared to last month’s ware! Pictured is just one board of a two board set, but the second board is a bit too much of a dead give-away so it’s been omitted. Thanks to Sam for thinking on her feet and snatching this board so that it could be donated to the contest!
My guess would be a programmer for RFID cards/tokens. The ANT trace seems like an NFC antenna. The microswitch seems like it would physically detect if something like a card is placed against this, and as far as I know that is not common for readers, but that might be useful for detecting (or speed up detection for) uninitialized cards
Looks like a board from an RFID lock reader. Tamper switch, JTAG header, unpopulated relay (and NO/NC contacts) to directly open a door strike without using an external controller, big integrated antenna, LED that lights up to show card read status…
Looks like the PCB of a RFID-controlled door lock. Clues:
– The 13.560 MHz oscillator
– The ANT trace is likely an NFC antenna, as johslarsen noticed
– The N.O. | COM | N.C. is probably Normally Open, Common, Normally Closed output to power a door lock
– I don’t think that the microswitch is there to detect if an empty card is being pressed against the reader. I think it’s there as anti-tamper protection.
Is it a cheap crappy thing like this? ‘S2-EM IP66 Waterproof 125kHz 13.56MHz RFID Access Control Card Reader Card Access Control System Manager for 2000 Users’ on AliExpress? https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256808655590972.html
The board seems like it’s small enough to fit inside. This product is claiming to have anti-tamper features as well as support for 13.56Mhz RFID cards and keyfobs. The PCB is also blue, which doesn’t seem very common unless it’s either a hobbyist product or cheap crap, since normally you aren’t going to see the PCB while using the product.